When the Son of Man gives you career advice, or a CD recommendation, you take it:

“He introduced us to jazz and George Benson when we were all listening to rock ‘n’ roll,” said Cunningham, now an attorney in Sacramento, Calif. “He also told me to stick to my studies because they’ll take me where I want to go. And I did, and I got to where I wanted to be.

And who but the Lamb would possess the serenity needed to write a minimally thoughtful farewell message, or to jab a few eye and mouth holes in a large orange gourd?

His keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention prompted Eric Kusunoki, Obama’s homeroom teacher for four years, to pull out a dusty maroon scrapbook stored away since 1979.

There among the clips and photos he had collected of all his students, Kusunoki found the teenage Obama — carving pumpkins, volunteering for class activities, celebrating birthdays, even writing a nice goodbye note to his teacher.

To steal a line from the comments section, BRIAN CHARLTON of the AP sounds like he just had a Obama-gasm.

From the main article:

Obama had multiethnic existence in Hawaii

Diversity was the norm at the Punahou School, one of the state's top private schools. The 3,600 students came from a wide variety of backgrounds, with a blend of Polynesian, Asian, European and other cultures. Everybody in Hawaii is a minority.

"It was a good melting pot. There were people from all different races," said Eric Smith, a friend and classmate of Obama's in the 1970s. "Everyone seemed to meld together."

Good grief. A whole bunch of rich kids in a private school is not diverse, no matter the ethnic make up. I'd be willing to put down decent money that each of these kids had a very similar privileged upbringing.

There among the clips and photos he had collected of all his students, Kusunoki found the teenage Obama — carving pumpkins, volunteering for class activities, celebrating birthdays, even writing a nice goodbye note to his teacher.

I tore and burned my schoolbooks at the end of each year. That was my "nice goodbye note".

I take it you didn't enjoy school?

Zorkie's a bookburner!

I hated high school and I hated my high school the most. I keep thinking that people in other high schools must have had a better time because a lot of people speak fondly of their high-school years. I hated every single minute of mine (except vacations and strikes of course, then I was in heaven :-) I went to a small private school that had a lot of rich (and snobbish) kids and teachers who expected a lot of work on our part with a minimum effort on theirs.

Heh. Meg, I bet if you were there, you would have set the whole school on fire.
(Seeing how obedient to authority you are and all that :-)

Now that I think about it, the one good thing about my high school is that I can say I went to school with a certain Greek supermodel and with the heiress to one of the country's biggest wineries. So if I'm ever in desperate need of a free bottle of ouzo or the phone number of a good makeup artist, I know who to call, thank God.

LOL
I went to a private school too, but it was a very different story. It was cheap, had a great reputation in the area and the student population was very economically diverse. About a third of the school went for free and another third was from the upper tax brackets, I mean crazy money - the Bill Clinton stayed at my house type money and then there was me and the other middle class kids. Everybody got along fine, it wasn't cliquish in the least bit since it was small. I had a great time and met some amazing people that have gone on to do some pretty neat stuff. We're still pretty close as a group.

I hated grade school. I loved middle school and high school. College was a mixed bag - heaven in some ways, hell in many other ways.

I've stayed in touch and maintained a friendship with two classmates out of a class of fifteen. I was pretty rebellious as a teenager and kept my distance from most people but mostly I resented that I was at a rich kids' school because I was a communist and I was ashamed of my bourgeois family and our lifestyle :-)

I kept most of my old notebooks from high school. I keep thinking that I might need the information at some point in the future. So far I haven't needed them. Maybe I will need them years from now, and information from the internet or a library won't be as helpful as notes I took when I was a teenager.

In middle school and high school I burned all my notebooks, papers and exams at the end of every school year. The only book I still have from middle school or high school is my Warriner's English Grammar.

RIP Ford's high school sounds a lot like mine, but sadly everyone seemed to go in different directions after graduation. Turnout at reunions is abysmal - at my 15th, it was 7 out of 250 (I was not one of the 7).

I loved college and I did really well with minimum effort and that really boosted my self-esteem because I didn't think I was very intelligent, given how badly I was doing in high-school. I give credit to my professors and the American educational system, if you're a student in a university in this country, the school is going to do its best to make sure you succeed. I cannot even begin to tell you how different (and eons better, of course) the American universities are compared to the universities in Greece. As an example, this fall, the Greek university freshmen had no start date for their classes. They were advised to call everyday, starting October 1st, to see if classes started. Can you imagine this happening in the U.S.?

LMAO!!

My ten year we had about 80 out of 120. It was fun.
I'm one of maybe ten still in San Antonio, most moved east. One of the running jokes is that I moved to England so I could be the furthest away from home, only to have a friend move to Jordan for a couple of years to take my prize. Bastid. 'Course when I got to London, three others from my class were working there too so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. :)

Keeping in touch isn't easy, but we all know what each is up to.

Did you go to school in your current state, or was it elsewhere?

Both :-)

Ah, I see.

LOL

It's snowing here - lightly, but since it's been below freezing for several days it's sticking like glue. Beautiful.